USING ANALYTICS TO IMPROVE YOUR BRAND
The combination of a strong social media influence—specifically Twitter, Facebook and Instagram—with a well-maintained analytics presence can provide a college and professional athletic media relations department with the best 1-2 combos in the field.
Looking back on my life, I can specifically pinpoint the moment that I fell in love with my career of athletic media relations. It came during a summer trip visit at the Professional Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio. As I concluded my tour of the bronze busts that lined the walls of the facility, I made my way to the gift shop and purchased a pen and cup of my favorite team—the Dallas Cowboys. At the register was a John Madden pamphlet, sponsored by Miller Lite, that allowed one to keep scores of the NFL games on a week-by-week basis.
The cashier said “go ahead, you can have one,” as I thumbed through it. I kept every score of every game that season and replicated it in memo pads over the course of the next nine seasons. It was there at 18 years old that I began putting those game-by-game results, along with player-by-player performances for specific teams and individuals, into Microsoft Excel from that point forward.
That John Madden pamphlet laid the foundation for a career that I have loved every moment of ever since. I not only followed the Dallas Cowboys with greater intent, but also set up memo pads to keep results and individual statistics of players from the Boston Celtics, Boston Red Sox and New England Patriots over the course of the last 33 years.
The common theme that you should realize by now is that analytics and your team are and always have been intertwined. All sports fans have a reason that they began following their specific teams—attended training camp games, met a player from that team along the way and got an autograph, simple adoration with the way that a player competes at the highest level or because you were simply attracted to a logo on a shirt—the possibilities are endless.
HOW ANALYTICS PLAY A PART IN THE PROCESS
Having those priceless statistics that highlight a unique fact from a game, whether it be a standout performance or a defensive shutdown, and being able to share that fact quickly in a graphic, tweet or Instagram feed can definitely help you gain fans and notoriety for your team.
Statistical analytics, and having them formatted in a quick and easy fashion, can help you highlight those facts in the fastest way possible. Imagine yourself sitting courtside, in the press box or at midfield of on-going game and being able to open an Excel spreadsheet and in less than five minutes find this information to put together in a graphic for your Twitter, Facebook and Instagram audience to like and share, getting you national, regional and local attention for an in-game accomplishment.
The graphic highlights the player that is most responsible for the positive fact about your team and you not only relate your brand (ex: jersey with logo, player along with a team logo) but also a positive fact about your team to draw attention to the institution or league.
THESE KIDS ARE RESILIENT TO CHANGE
I conducted some research int 2015 and my findings showed that the most effective way to increase attendance at athletic events is by integrating more children ages 6-10 into the athletic marketing plan. It is pointed out by James (2001) that research indicates loyalty is a characteristic formed in the primary stages of life and maintained throughout. Furthermore, people who identified a strong attachment to specific product maintained their attachment over a 20-year period (James, 2001). James (2001) highlights a 1986 study by K.D. Bahn that used Piaget’s cognitive development stage theory from 1970 which separates children into two groups: preoperational (2-7 years old) and concrete operation (7-12), which covers the age range for the purposes of this research. Bahn (1986) points out those children in both preoperational and concrete groups were forming bias towards a specific cereal and beverage brands even at young age. And while Bahn’s (1986) research doesn’t indicate the way that the bias was formed it does show the ways that cognitive development becomes part of the process.
According to James (2001), cognitive development is defined as “the process by which people learn to recognize the larger world around them, to process information, and to make distinctions between different objects and situations.” This would be of particular note to anyone involved with athletics as it would point out the stages that an individual would form their opinions and make a mental connection to pull for their particular team.
To study this, James (2001) used two groups of children that included ages 5-6 (n=25) and 8-9 (n=25) and analyzed components including (a) attending a team’s favorite games, (b) watching a favorite team on television, (c) reading about a favorite team, (d) talking about a favorite team and (e) owning team-related merchandise. The results that were most prevalent from the study indicated that just 7-of-26 children with a favorite team were female (none of which came from the age group 5-6); they liked a team because of an association (playing for a team called the Cubs, they seemed to be drawn to the Cubs); and 44 percent of all the children refused to change their favorite team.
Some of the most important data collected by James (2001), in the case of athletic branding and the importance that sports analytics can play, is that 85 percent of the children used in the study, who had a favorite team, were unaffected by losing seasons or transformations to the team. This is specifically important in the case of the long-suffering teams who have endured years of losing. Anyone who has been a fan of the team since the 1983-84 campaign endured 22 losing seasons in that span.
I specifically analyzed The Citadel men’s basketball program as part of my research and found that there have been 170 cadet-student-athletes to see at least one minute of action for the Bulldogs basketball program, according to The Citadel Record & Fact Book. These constant modifications to the roster are existent in all of college athletics, so it would be difficult to associate a player, such as Cal Ripken who spent 21 seasons as the shortstop and third baseman of the Baltimore Orioles, with a program unless it was head coach. An example of this, in the world of college basketball, would be Syracuse’s Jim Boeheim (30+ years) or Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski (30+ years). Therefore, this bond between a favorite team and the child is a cognitive one, as it provides multiple reasons for rooting for a team and that its performance, for good or bad, would not play a role in breaking the bond with that team.
A marketing tactic that can coincide with that of James, and increase the attendance of youth at Citadel basketball games, while retaining those Bulldog fans already in place, is to place a greater commitment on rivalry games was highlighted in a 2006 study conducted by Rein. This is particularly important with crosstown rival College of Charleston’s recent departure from the Southern Conference. The Cougars, who the Bulldogs played twice a year as a conference opponent, became members of the Colonial Athletic Association at the close of the 2012-13 campaign. It is pointed out “rivalries create the foundation for story lines that ingratiate the sport fan and consumer to one team or athlete over another.” Rein (2006)
The atmosphere that is intertwined with a rivalry is the classic battle of villains versus heroes and gives the fan something to cheer for and against in an epic battle. Specifically speaking, “print publications personalize and sensationalize athletes in attempts to increase entertainment value, drama, and focus so that fans can more readily categorize sports stars as villains, fools, or heroes.” (Lines, 2001) In the instance of rivalry with The Citadel and College of Charleston men’s basketball, a buzz in the local newspaper divides one set of fans against the other and generates a large amount of publicity before and after the game which is the perfect elixir to draw younger fans to the program.
The last significant finding pointed out by James (2001) that would increase youth attendance at Citadel basketball games concentrates around branding and children. It was determined that 20 of the boys in the transitional group and 18 in the concrete operational group owned apparel of their favorite team, while the none of the girls had apparel of a team which they followed.
As athletic programs move forward it needs to make a commitment to brand the player’s, more specifically their player number, to the area youth as much as the schedule, media propaganda, etc., because it would eliminate a child being less involved because of their inability to read the statistics and newspaper articles and at the same time strengthen the bond between the child’s favorite player number and their own number.
By interconnecting the ideals of cognitive bonds, comprehension skills and branding specifically to children in an area, an athletic program would be able to create a generation of “super fans” that would be loyal to the Bulldog basketball team. The results of combining these ideals, laid out in James (2001), were evident in the NFL’s marketing strategies implemented in Europe prior to the start of the 1980 season. The league managed to combine the written and visual media propaganda with branding of its teams to not only increase its revenue, but also make American football a highly visible sport in the European market.
NFL’S EUROPEAN MODEL PROVIDES BLUEPRINT FOR COLLEGIATE ATHLETICS
Based on research, conducted in the 1980’s, one of the models that collegiate athletic department can emulate is one that NFL put in place in its European market, which proved highly successful from a media, branding and written propaganda standpoint. The league combined its promotional tactics with Anheuser-Busch and British television to assist in the emergence of American football in the predominant soccer landscape of England. This tactic strengthened the connection between the fans, media and corporations affiliated with NFL and led to an escalation in merchandise sales, sponsorships and endorsements.
The first way that Maguire (1990) provides insight from international marketing director for the NFL in 1987, James Connelly, to point out that these aggressive marketing tactics, put in play by the league, cut down on the amount of time it took to expand the game into the European market as opposed to the United States. “What you now have in the UK is a microcosm of the US NFL market with one major difference: business that took almost 20 years to develop in the USA has taken a fraction of that time in Great Britain. It is obviously a very receptive market for new ideas and products,” writes Connelly (Maguire, 1990).
By comparison to the NFL model, Citadel basketball has experienced on a national scale, the NFL was sporadically reported about, with the exception of the Super Bowl, during a five-year stretch in England. In comparison, the same thing could be said of a mid-major athletic program on a state, regional and national level, with the exception being when they compete against a top 25 or highly visible in-state opponent.
However, as Maguire points out, in 1982 wholesale changes began taking place in the English sports landscape that altered the view of American football. The most significant of these transformations occurred when Channel 4 began airing American football on a routine basis by packaging the game with the Anheuser-Busch brand.
The second way that the Maguire (1990) points out that the NFL reached a larger population of younger fans was through the rise of the visual media and through the introduction of the written publications such as Touchdown, Firstdown/Quarterback and Gridiron, which sold 54,000 copies between Touchdown and Gridiron combined between Jan. 1984 and Feb. 1987 (Maguire, 1990). In 1987, the national newspaper, The Daily Telegraph, developed a weekly publication known as The Daily Telegraph American Football Magazine which consisted of over 100,000 readers (Maguire, 1990). The Daily Telegraph managed to capitalize on the NFL brand to increase its sales by 5-to-10 percent every Friday within the London market, and by 30,000 readers outside the London market reached by postal delivery, by simply previewing all of the games on the NFL schedule (Maguire, 1990). In addition to The Daily Telegraph, a magazine publisher also developed an 18-part series that was released along with the start of the 1986 NFL season, which was subsequently used by Channel 4 and pushed the magazine sales to 275,000 for Part I and over 2 million for the entire series (Maguire, 1990). The league, realizing this thirst for knowledge by the European fan base, granted additional publications to cover American football including American Football Yearbook, Who’s Who in American Football?, Quarterback Magazine and American Football Book.
Due to the rise in visual and written publications, American football in the European market allowed the NFL to turn its concentrate its efforts on three primary groups: the fan/consumer, licensees and major corporations. In order to reach this goal the NFL attempted to reach four main objectives: (a) to promote the game abroad on a long-term sustained basis; (b) to create and then educate a new fan base; (c) to establish and protect NFL trademarks on a worldwide basis for commercial applications; (d) to generate revenues (Connelly, 1987). One of the ways that the aforementioned objectives was reached came by using highlight shows on Channel 4 earlier on Sunday evenings to assure that a younger audience was able to watch.
Through the rise of these visual and written publications a new fan base was achieved. The fans of the European market not only followed the successes of the NFL teams, but more importantly believed deeply in the quality of the NFL product, which allowed the NFL to infiltrate “38% of all households with children between the ages of 4 and 15 were interested in NFL football, and over 50% watched it regularly on Channel 4; 33% owned some NFL branded merchandise; and 50% of households with boys ages 10-15 were interested in the game.” (Maguire, 1990) As a result of these marketing ploys, the NFL trademarks became an integral part of British culture which resulted in sales increasing from “￡125,000 in 1983-84 to over ￡25 million in 1987.” (Maguire, 1990) {$200,800 US Dollars to over $40,160,173 US Dollars}
The Citadel basketball program also has the luxury of a major newspaper in Charleston, The Post & Courier, which provides a beat writer who covers the team exclusively in a market that reaches 83,000 readers. More intensified game previews, game recaps, feature stories and use of photos would certainly assist in the sale of newspapers and develop a stronger business relationship for The Citadel and The Post & Courier. That would, in turn, lead the newspaper to develop and produce additional propaganda (signs to be displayed at games, in-depth magazine style previews about all players on the team, etc.) due in large part to the realization that it captured The Citadel market with its coverage.
By including The Post & Courier, as well as local news stations that would follow in the same fashion that Channel 4 did in the British market, The Citadel athletic department could adjust its marketing plan to promote the games for the long haul; gain and sustain a youthful bloodline in the core fan base; improve on sales of its trademarks and logos collectively on a state, regional and national scale; and increase revenue generated with additional corporate sponsors. The corporate sponsor sales would increase with the infiltration of youth in the fan base because sponsors, like The Citadel, thrive on long-term sales and brand loyalty, which, as detailed earlier, comes in the primary stages of an individual’s existence.
The process of integrating younger fans into The Citadel basketball model, similar to that of the NFL, is crucial to the long-term development of the program. Wann and Branscombe (1993) developed a way to measure team identification in relationship to fan behavior. The result of this study was that “fans with high levels of team identification appear to be more involved with their team and more willing to invest time and resources into being a fan.” Wann & Branscombe (1993) This model, when applied to Charleston-area youth, would allow The Citadel to benefit, both from an athletic and institutional standpoint. The type of fan connection that Wann and Branscombe describe would create a stronger connection with The Citadel from an academic vantage point, a financial growth as fans buy more Bulldog basketball gear and most important revisit McAlister Field House as they feel a deeper connection to the program.
REFERENCES
Bahn, K.D. (1986). How and when do brand perceptions and preferences first form? A cognitive developmental investigation. Journal of Consumer Research, 13, 382-393.
Connelly, J. (1987). Influencing your customer. Recreation management: The sports council’s national seminar and exhibition. Harrogate, London: Sports Council, p. 46-58.
James, J.D. (2001). The role of cognitive development and socialization in the initial development of team loyalty. Leisure Sciences, 23, 233-261.
Lines, G. (2001). Villians, fools or heroes? Sports stars as role models for young people. Leisure Studies, 20, 285-303.
Maguire, J. (1990). More than a sporting touchdown: the making of American football in England 1982-1990. Sociology of Sport Journal, 7, 213-237.
Rein, I., Kotler, P., & Sheilds, B. (2006). The elusive fan: Reinventing sports in a crowded marketplace. Future Research Quarterly, Winter, 66-76.
Wann, D.L., & Branscombe, N.R. (1993). Sports fans: Measuring degree of identification with their team. International Journal of Sport Psychology, 24, 1-17.